


thought that I was tucked up in my bedroom, fast asleep

by colazitron



Series: 2020 December Prompts [2]
Category: Watcher Entertainment RPF
Genre: (in a way), Christmas Fluff, Established Relationship, Kid Fic, M/M, Post-Canon, also Christmas drama, but harmless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:47:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27843994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colazitron/pseuds/colazitron
Summary: It's Christmas morning, and all is rosy in the Bergara-Madej household. Or is it?
Relationships: Ryan Bergara/Shane Madej
Series: 2020 December Prompts [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2036338
Comments: 30
Kudos: 60





	thought that I was tucked up in my bedroom, fast asleep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blacktofade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blacktofade/gifts).



> for Jo, who said we need more married with baby fics

Christmas morning dawned soft and quiet, Jamie still blessedly asleep. He’d always been a good kid when it came to sleeping through the night, but now, at four years old, Ryan wasn’t about to take a quiet Christmas morning for granted anymore. He wouldn’t have been surprised at all to find Jamie shaking them awake before the sun had even risen, but the previous night’s dinner with his grandparents must have tuckered him out. So here Ryan was, eight am on Christmas morning with his son still asleep, flipping pancakes while his husband hummed quietly to himself as he brewed them coffee.

Once Shane was done, he came to stand by Ryan’s side, one arm casually wrapped around his waist. Ryan turned to meet him in a brief kiss before he returned his attention to the pancakes.

“Want me to take over?” Shane offered. “You can go wake up the little tyke.”

“You just don’t want to argue with him about wearing socks,” Ryan teased, but handed the spatula over and let Shane take his place by the stove.

Upstairs, he found Jamie sitting up in his bed, locked in intense eye contact with his favourite stuffed penguin.

“Good morning, little dude,” Ryan greeted him, his already broad smile ticking up a notch when Jamie looked up at him.

“Hi, dad,” he said, a little subdued.

Wary, Ryan sat down at the edge of Jamie’s bed and reached out a hand to stroke over his head, sorting out a few of the longer strands of hair that hung into his face.

“Are you alright? Did you have a scary dream?”

Jamie shook his head. “I dreamed that Santa came by.”

“Ooh,” Ryan cooed and shot Jamie a conspiratory look. Maybe he could distract him with the prospect of presents from whatever it was that had him feeling blue. “I think Santa actually did come by.”

Instead of eliciting excitement though, Ryan’s announcement made Jamie’s face scrunch up in worry.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Yeah, your daddy told me he saw him put the pre--”

“No!” Jamie yelled and then burst into tears, pressing his face down into Mr. Waddle’s fluffy belly.

“Jamie? What’s wrong, honey?” Ryan asked, reaching out carefully to rub Jamie’s back. “Don’t you want to see what presents Santa left you?”

Jamie only cried harder and shook his head insistently.

“I hate Santa!” he wailed, as possibly the first kid in the history of Christmas.

At a complete loss, Ryan grabbed him around the middle and pulled him onto his lap, letting him bury his face in his sweater before he reached for a tissue from the box by Jamie’s bed. Poor kid always had the sniffles in the morning.

“Come on, it’s alright,” he cooed. “It’s all good. Tell me what’s wrong, so I can help fix it, hm?”

Jamie snuffled a few more times and then looked up at Ryan with red, tear-stricken eyes.

“Are you and daddy getting a divorce now?” he asked.

Of all the things Ryan had been expecting, that for sure hadn’t been it.

“What? No, of course not,” he said. “Why do you think daddy and I are getting a divorce?”

Maybe Mark and Sherry’s separation, amicable though it had been, had left a deeper impression on him than they’d thought.

“I, I saw--” Jamie gasped, and then burst into a fresh round of tears.

Ryan abandoned the idea of speaking for the moment, and just pulled Jamie close again, rocking him from side to side and humming a few notes of the Christmas song Shane had been humming downstairs. Behind him, he could hear Shane’s footsteps coming up the stairs, and so he turned his head to meet his questioning gaze with a small shrug of his own. Shane hovered in the doorway, giving them space, and after a few more sobs, Jamie calmed down enough to let Ryan wipe his face again.

“Alright, there you go,” he said, pushing Jamie’s hair out of his face again and pressing a few kisses to his forehead for good measure. “Want to try again? What did you see, honey?”

“I heard the-- the reindeer bells last night and I wanted to-- to see Santa,” Jamie said, interrupting himself with hiccuping half-sobs every now and then.

“Okay,” Ryan said, still stroking Jamie’s hair, desperately trying to figure out what on Earth could have gone wrong last night. Shane and he had decided to play act a Santa visit for Jamie around the time he usually woke up to pee again before he slept through the rest of the night, so when they’d heard him traipse out into the hallway, Shane had shook a few sleighbells and Ryan, in a full Santa costume, had made sure to be clearly visible from the stairs as he put the presents underneath the tree. “Was Santa not nice?”

Maybe the light had caught his face weird or something?

Jamie shook his head, and then pressed his face against Ryan’s chest again. Above his head, Ryan exchanged a helpless glance with Shane.

“Santa-- Santa and daddy were kissing, dad!” Jamie wailed, and even as he burst into another round of tears, Ryan felt his shoulders sag with relief.

“Oh, no, no, no, honey,” he cooed, petting Jamie’s hair, and exchanging another look with Shane who was quietly laughing in the doorway, one hand pressed over his mouth.. “You don’t have to worry, daddy wasn’t really kissing Santa Claus.”

Jamie hiccuped and looked up at him with wide, shining eyes, uncomprehending. “But I saw them. It wasn’t a dream, dad!” he insisted.

“No, I know, Jamie. I believe you,” Ryan soothed. “But it wasn’t really Santa, okay? I promise.”

“But--but--”

Thoughts racing, Ryan wiped his thumbs over Jamie’s cheeks, and then reached for another tissue to help him blow his nose.

“I’m going to tell you a secret, okay? About Santa,” he started, lowering his voice a little.

“A secret?” Jamie echoed.

Ryan nodded. “A secret that the little kids don’t know yet, but I think you’re a big enough boy to know.”

Jamie swallowed heavily and nodded, though he still looked a little skeptical, the expression on his face pure Shane.

“Well, Santa has to get presents to all the kids in the world on Christmas, right?” Ryan started.

“Only the good kids,” Jamie interrupted, and Ryan wondered for roughly the fortieth time this Christmas season if that particular message was insisted upon maybe a little too strongly.

“Right,” he said anyway. “And that’s a loooot of presents. It’s so much, Santa actually needs a little help.”

“From the elves?” Jamie asked.

Ryan nodded. “From the elves, yes, but from the mommies and daddies all over the world too. Santa actually brings some gifts a little early, and then asks the parents to put them under the tree for him.”

“But I saw Santa,” Jamie insisted again.

Ryan grimaced apologetically and stroked a hand over Jamie’s hair again. “That was me, Jamie. I was wearing a Santa costume, and daddy was helping me.”

“But it’s not Halloween,” Jamie protested. “Costumes aren’t for Christmas!”

Ryan shrugged. “Your dad’s just a little silly sometimes.”

Jamie seemed to mull this over, not entirely convinced yet, but at least he wasn’t crying anymore.

“Do you want me to show you the costume? Then I can show you that it was really just me you saw,” Ryan suggested. “Would that be alright?”

Jamie huffed a sigh and put on a brave face before nodding. “Okay.”

“Okay, great,” Ryan agreed, and then looked over to Shane in the doorway. “Can Daddy come too?”

Jamie looked up, eyes widening when he took Shane in, and then nodded shakily. He held onto Mr. Waddles the penguin tightly as Ryan lifted him up onto his hip, watching Shane carefully, but he didn’t start crying again, so Ryan counted it as a win. Shane led them through to their bedroom and opened the closet door so Ryan could show Jamie the costume that hung all the way to one side.

“See?” he said. “It was just me.”

Carefully, Shane took the white beard off the hanger and slipped it over Ryan’s head before plopping the Santa hat onto his hair as well.

Jamie’s eyes went round with wonder and then, for the first time that day, he giggled.

“Dad, you’re so silly!” he laughed. “No one can even see you in our living room!”

“Well, Daddy could see me,” Ryan says. “And I like making your daddy laugh.”

Jamie pulled the beard down to better see Ryan’s face and laughed again. “You’re weird,” he declared, feeling the rough texture of the cheap fake beard.

“Is everything alright now, kiddo?” Shane asked carefully, and Jamie nodded shyly before turning and wiggling in Ryan’s arms until he handed him off to Shane, Mr. Waddles falling to the floor unceremoniously.

“You’re not leaving, daddy?” he asked, voice small.

Shane swooped in to press a firm kiss to Jamie’s head.

“Of course not,” he said. “I love you and your dad so much. I would never want to be away from you.”

In answer Jamie flung his arms around Shane’s neck, hugging him tight. Shane kissed his head again, and then bounced him a little to make him laugh again.

“Alright, should we all go pick out some socks for you then so we can go open presents and have pancakes?”

“I don’t want socks!” Jamie protested immediately, and Ryan and Shane shared a look and a chagrined smile.

“I know, kiddo, but you’ll get sick if your feet get too cold,” Shane argued back, carrying Jamie back to his own bedroom. Ryan returned to beard and hat to their place before picking up Mr. Waddles and following them, the sound of their bickering familiar as breathing.

Crisis averted. Back to business as usual.

**The End**

**Author's Note:**

> Come [leave me a prompt](https://fille-lioncelle.tumblr.com/post/636238948156538880/multifandom-december-prompt-fics-aka-the-event) if you'd like!


End file.
